## Facts

- Monsanto manufactured pesticides and, to obtain and maintain federal registrations, submitted extensive health, safety, and environmental data to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA).
- FIFRA amendments permitted EPA to (1) rely on an applicant’s submitted data when evaluating later applicants and (2) publicly disclose certain submitted data, including some information that could reveal trade secrets.
- The 1978 amendments created (a) a 10-year exclusive-use period for data on new active ingredients in post-September 30, 1978 registrations, and (b) a 15-year period for EPA reliance on other post-1969 data if the later applicant offered compensation, with binding arbitration if parties could not agree and forfeiture of compensation rights if the original submitter refused to arbitrate.
- Data outside the exclusive-use or compensation regimes could be considered by EPA without limitation.
- Monsanto alleged it spent more than $23.6 million developing data submitted under FIFRA.
- Monsanto sued for declaratory and injunctive relief, asserting that FIFRA’s data-consideration and data-disclosure provisions effected an uncompensated taking and that the data-consideration scheme took property for private use.
- The district court held the challenged provisions unconstitutional and permanently enjoined EPA from enforcing them; the government appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether Monsanto’s interest in submitted data, to the extent protected as trade secrets under state law, constitutes “property” protected by the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause.
2. Whether FIFRA effects a taking by allowing EPA to rely on a submitter’s data to approve competitors’ applications and by authorizing public disclosure of submitted data.
3. Whether the data-consideration provisions effect a taking for a private (nonpublic) use.
4. How the timing of data submissions under differing statutory regimes (pre-1972, 1972–1978, post-1978) affects reasonable investment-backed expectations and takings analysis.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court largely reversed and remanded.
- The Court held that trade-secret interests in the submitted data, insofar as recognized under Missouri law, are “property” protected by the Takings Clause.
- The Court rejected a facial takings challenge to EPA’s post-1978 data-use regime, emphasizing that submissions made under a statute clearly permitting later reliance (with exclusive-use and compensation/arbitration mechanisms) were voluntary exchanges for the economic benefits of registration and did not constitute a taking.
- The Court rejected the claim that allowing competitors to rely on the data constituted a private-use taking, finding the scheme served public purposes.
- The Court indicated that public disclosure of certain pre-1978 trade-secret data, where the submitter could reasonably have expected confidentiality, could constitute a compensable taking, and remanded for further proceedings on those disclosure-related claims.

## Legal Principles

- Trade secrets, though intangible, can constitute “property” under the Fifth Amendment when state law recognizes them as property rights.
- Takings analysis considers reasonable investment-backed expectations, which are shaped by the regulatory terms in force when the property interest was created or submitted.
- When a regulated party voluntarily submits data in exchange for government-conferred economic benefits under a statutory scheme that clearly defines government use and disclosure rights, the submitter’s expectations are limited accordingly, reducing the likelihood of a taking.
- Statutory mechanisms providing compensation (including mandatory arbitration) are relevant to whether any appropriation of value is constitutionally compensated.
- A regulatory program that incidentally benefits identifiable private parties can satisfy the public-use requirement where the overall purpose is public (e.g., efficient regulation, reduced duplicative testing, competition, and protection of health and the environment).
- Public disclosure that destroys the economic value of trade secrets may be a taking if it contravenes confidentiality expectations established under earlier legal regimes.

## Conclusion

The Court recognized trade secrets as Takings Clause property, upheld FIFRA’s post-1978 conditional data-sharing and compensation structure against a facial takings challenge, rejected the private-use theory, and remanded to assess whether disclosure of certain pre-1978 trade-secret data required just compensation.


Ruckelshaus v. Monsanto Co., 467 U.S. 986 (1984)